Complaint against Corporate Greed and the non-intervention of the PUC

Dear Mr. Editor,

I write to address a situation where I observe that Corporate greed seems to have gone rampant and assumed a life of its own. Added to this, the Public Utilities Commission – which I assume according to its mandate – is supposed to be looking out for the interest of the consumer, does not seem to be addressing these issues.

I would like to address two situations to highlight my contention. In the banking industry, many of our banks seem to have embraced the digital development and with it, they have transferred a lot of the intervention for accounts management, from themselves, to the customer. This on the surface seems to be a good thing, as in theory it gives the customer more control of his/her affairs.

Where this seems to be disconnected, is where customers had previously given authority to the bank to carry out certain adjustments on their accounts should certain situations arise. What the bank in many cases seemed to have done, is that in implementing their ‘on-line banking’ services, which puts the management of accounts in the customer’s domain, the banks (one bank in particular according to my experience) have neglected to inform the customers in many cases, that some of the services that they previously took responsibility for, would no longer be available and therefore the customer has the responsibility for them going forward.

One pointed example: I had given to the bank a note on my accounts [I have a savings and a chequing account], that should a cheque be written on my chequing account and there were insufficient funds therein, they should transfer funds from my savings account to cover the cheque. This arrangement worked well for many years (too many to remember). Recently a client had a cheque of mine returned for insufficient funds, which I thought was not possible. On enquiring from the bank, I was told that with the on-line banking, customers are now responsible to ensure enough money is in their accounts.

There is nothing wrong with this approach, but I believe that the bank has the responsibility to inform the customer(s) of such a policy change. In my case I received no such information and the bank proceeded to charge me a penalty fee, for insufficient funds, when I was not informed of this change in their policy. To my mind this is corporate greed, taking advantage of customers, when they did not explicitly inform the customer of their policy change.

My next example relates to the telephone industry. In Guyana, ALL the telephone line plant is owned by GT&T [recently changed to One Communications]; therefore customers have no options. The Guyana Telephone system is linked to other telephone systems around the world. I recently had an incident in which my VISA card had a lot of fraudulent charges on it. As a result I was forced to call the VISA Card company to protest these charges.

When one calls VISA, from an overseas country, VISA states clearly on the back their card that they accept “Collect Call” charges to a certain number listed on the card. As soon as the number is dialled, the VISA operator comes on and says “we accept collect calls”. However, here in Guyana GT&T/One communications have changed their modus operandi, in such a way, that in spite of the receiver of the call confirming their acceptance of the charges, the local customer is still charged for the call. Because these are queries, they take a long time. I only found out by chance, the GT&T/One Communications charged me for over 30 minutes on an overseas call to VISA to clear up such a situation. Added to that, I had reason to call VISA again, this time using my cell phone and once again I was charged for the call, which is when I discovered what was happening, as all my credit was consumed and as the credit expired, the call was dropped. This is when I discovered all of these charges that are being levied against the customer, even though the entity guarantees collect calls are being accepted.

Further enquires from GT&T/One Communications revealed that it is not possible to make a collect call by cell phone or land line out of Guyana. This is something that the PUC should be investigating, since this is disadvantageous to local customers.

Another issue that I believe the PUC needs to address, is the high charges being levied by the utility for late fees on customers. In today’s world, where no manual intervention is needed to disconnect a telephone customer for late payment [unlike GPL for electricity]; yet the telephone company charges $3,000 as a disconnect/reconnection fee, when literally no human intervention is needed or involved, since the entire process is automated. This fee (though needed), is UNCONSCIONABLY HIGH. I believe that this is an issue that the PUC should be addressing, since it is a burden on the users of the service.

I raise these two issues with you Mr. Editor, since I can only attribute these unconscionably high fees being charged customers, to greed. NO CUSTOMER is reimbursed when the telephone service or internet is out for many hours at a time, yet late fee payment attracts a SEVERE penalty. I would like to hear your voice on the issues Mr. Editor.